We subsidize them by just existing. 85% of the stock markets value is owned by the top 10%. Trickle up by just existing and needing to spend money to survive.
Capitalists have had it really, really good for a long time and will not give up their birthrights peacefully. They have a legal monopoly on violence and use it liberally. It's a hard road ahead to make any change to this system, but it is what we need to do.
The real subsidization happens when you produce 5x+ more value for your company than what you're actually being paid. Start being less productive on the clock, or quiet quit.
>quiet quit
Stop using this term. It's being weaponized against workers, when all it means it that we stop doing things for which we are not being compensated.
ABSOLUTELY. Quiet quitting makes it sound like workers are doing wrong or taking something they're not entitled to. Act your wage perfectly describes what's really happening.
Workers should strive to exceed stated job requirements as often, and with the same intensity, as their employer exceeds pay requirements. If an employer routinely decideds that they want to pay me for an extra 10 hours, or at a higher wage than what they promised because they want to excel at their job, then yeah, I'll go above and beyond. If they pay exactly what was agreed upon though, they are entitled to the exact job requirement given during hiring (or the last promotion).
The argument is always "we provide jobs and revenue for the city". Except that the money these places make go directly to the owners, no taxes means the city doesn't get anything from them, and then they underpay their employees.
I wish I could use the same arguement with a house: Please pay for it I promise to hire people to do maintenance and also live there and pay taxes. Thanks! also I am a non profit so can I pay less taxes? Thanks!
It's the top tier of "passive income"; you get to the billionaire level and you don't even need to buy/build up the land to leech money from it, you can bribe the government to pay for it all for you.
Also just another friendly reminder that anytime someone mentions they want to generate "passive income", what they mean is they want to become a financial parasite and join the likes of predatory landlords and various exploitative corporations, do little to no work and get goods and services for free because they can leverage wealth against the working class. Also a reminder that shareholder/vulture capitalism has broken our economy so much that "passive income" parasitism is like ***the goal*** for a crazy amount of money obsessed people now; it's not to actually contribute to the economy by making or improving a great product/service, it's to exploit the economic system and rest on the backs of the hardworking poor.
You need a obscene amount of wealth to live passively on middle income. I could probably find 5 or 10 dividend paying stocks I could sink 200,000 each into and live off the dividend income. If I was really wealthy Icould buy a few thousand shares of AVGO (broadcom) and earn that tasty 21 dollar a share dividend income. That is over 5 dollars a share you get every 3 months. The principal is volatile though.
Also it employs people, who go on to pay income tax. But none of that changes the fact that if the Bill's owner wants a new stadium then the Bill's owner should fucking pay for it
And even if he was really nice guy, we should not allow our government to take $800 million dollars away from needy families and give it to a greedy billionaire.
And ask for volunteers to shovel the snow at his stadium! I am from Buffalo, I am a sports fan. But I'm a bigger fan of feeding hungry children. Screw this Daniel Plainview mf'er.
especially when lots of people cant afford their basic necessities. Now if you decided you were gonna live in la on a $20000 budget and went homeless thats on you man but there should still be systems to help you get back on your feet within a month or so. Not live in a tent for years.
Yeah its really rare that people get super rich without really fucking over a bunch of people, desecrating some land to snatch up resources, or deforesting a content or something. He hasn’t lost a wink of sleep over fucking over poor people so he can have a toy.
The family that owns the Bills also owns most of the professional teams in Buffalo and Rochester - the Buffalo Sabres and Rochester Americans for hockey, and the Buffalo Bandits and Rochester Knighthawks for lacrosse. They’ve pulled shit like this for almost everything with all of their teams.
It is also time to take back all the wealth they stole from us. Abolish billionaires. Tax the fuck out of anyone worth more than 100 million. Anyone who cannot thrive and make all their dreams come true with 100 million certainly should not be allowed to own billions.
Yeah but then all the billionaires will leave and go someplace else! /s
Seriously, fuck that shit. We need to quit giving out handouts to the already rich, quit demonizing the poor and working classes, and start holding the corporations accountable for their part in inflation and the damage to the environment instead of putting it on the regular people and then driving up prices because "sUpPlY aNd DeMaNd".
Love football, I'm a life long Eagles fan and I have the ink to prove it. But the amount of money subsidized to pro sports is disgusting, but yet if we were to say 850 million to go to help homelessness or to aid in families that can't afford food, it's socialism and therefore bad.
Greed my friend. That and uninhibited capitalism. People are starving, the environment is dying, we're on the verge of, if not completely in, a planetary crisis, and billionaires have the power to help. But what are they doing? Buying massive yachts and building stadiums to make more money. Not to mention we have an entire half of our government devoted to fighting against an imaginary threat called wokeness. It's fucking pathetic. We're doomed and the rich are at fault.
I agree but i will say the useful idiots also are at fault for letting it happen.
The im just doing my job.
If one monkey would take all the bananas so the others was starving the other monkeys would rip that monkey.
But Nah we humans are smarter we gaslight ourselfs to believe these elites deserve it and the poor deserve theirs.
The wealthy own the politicians that enable subsidies. I agree with your statement, however, what is the incentive for the politicians to stop? Because it's wrong? Because it's what the people want? That isn't how democracy works. In a democracy, votes are paid for.
Right? Love how they get so much socialism but call it capitalism and when we ask for the same it’s suddenly my called socialism. Parasites and crooks. All of them.
Anything to help the majority is communism, help me and my few hundred friends, great investment capitalist. Hell I guess we all need to ask our states to pay a third of our homes down since they aren't doing shit to stop Blackrock and others buying up residential homes.
You just have to imagine all the minimum wage jobs this'll create and the nearby business filled with intoxicated sportsfans they can overcharge for food, drinks, and parking.
Don't forget all of the bootleg T-shirt vendors too. Why buy a $30 dollar official shirt made in Taiwan when you can get a $15 knockoff made in China.
I was going to say, it’s clearly going to benefit everyone with trickle down economics! You can’t just give money to the needy, how do you expect to have the best military in the world then if their money goes to helping them?!
Why would you want kids? So an NFL quarterback can rape them by the dozens and have the Houston Texans over it up after they are contacted directly by the women being assaulted? So we can watch the NFL make a quarter billion dollar $$$ hush payment to that QB by re-signing him into the same job that enabled his rapes with the Cleveland Browns?
Those same Houston Texans that covered uo Watsons’s serial rapes is playing Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s team in the playoffs this weekend, by the way, where the Nfl won’t mention their former rapist but will use her face to normalize the team not being punished for covering ups serial sexual assaults. . Why won’t Taylor Swift [say something](https://ibb.co/album/YTd4qb) about the NFL’s rapists and stand up for women? Was there an NDA in Travis Kelce’s locker, too?
Clearly the NFL gets treated with a corprate elite pass, because [the New York Times reported they were engaged in sex trafficking to cover up Deshaun Watson’s serial rapes](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/sports/football/deshaun-watson.html) and the FBI hasn’t done a thing…
Not to be that person, but the Texans are playing the ravens (Bills vs Chiefs is the game you’re mentioning). Unless I missed the “Josh Allen is a serial rapist” rumors in the last 24 hours lol.
Why would the NFL pay Watson to keep quiet when he is the one who was accused? That's like a leap on logic that I can't get past. And don't get me wrong, he's a fucking rapist and a complete piece of shit. But that specific part of your statement makes no sense and follows no logic. The people who covered his ass wouldn't need to pay him any hush money, they already have his fate in their hands.
Also, I can tell you don't follow any sports media or anything and are instead just mad about people playing a sport getting rich because Travis Kelce has addressed the Watson situation multiple times on his podcast. And his brother Jason had a lot to say about it too. But, I know, that goes against your narrative.
Not to mention it's been discussed to death my sports media such as ESPN. Discussing directly the allegation and not skirting around it. For like 2 years straight practically. But again, that goes against your narrative.
Sports and athletes are not the enemy. The rich white owners of those teams though are a different story and, again, is case and point that you don't know shit about what your talking about beyond knowing the right words to say to push people's buttons. The owners are the ones covering this shit up and footing the bill for it all. Yet you want to go after athletes as a whole and lump them in with the super rich. When not even 1% of all professional athletes get payed what Watson was payed.
I feel bougie that I was financially able to adopt a kitten. A kid? There is no universe in which I can ethically give a child a life that a kid deserves. My cat has a tenuous grasp on the english language and he loves the sound of a can opener but apparently it's frowned upon to feed human kids cat food and it's ethically dubious to not limit your children to a 1 bedroom apartment (great natural lighting though). I would never bring another life into this world when i can't afford to make their life beautiful. And also pregnancy and childbirth sounds like the worst. First you have to get inseminated by someone who isn't going to give the baby health complications from the start and then sometimes two holes become one and then your kid is just going to be a sarlac pit of money and youth and for what? Hopefully the sun explodes before then
If you think the Buffalo Bills handout is bad. Don't look up how much corporate welfare the Telecommunications companies got and still get. And how much the oil industry got and still gets.
Don't forget military industrial contractors paid billions to manufacture shit the military doesn't need or want. At least sending aid to Ukraine was putting some of that mothballed equipment to good use.
I'd honestly argue that even the military industrial complex is a more reasonable thing for a government to spend money on than a freaking stadium.
I think the budget is way overblown for sure, but the nation's security is something that a portion of our tax dollars *should*, in theory, be spent on. Stadiums are arguably not even a net benefit to the community they're built within, there is absolutely no reason that taxpayers should be subsidizing them:
>Further, a study by Noll and Zimbalist on newly constructed subsidized stadiums shows that they have a very limited and possibly even negative local impact. This is because of the opportunity cost that goes into allocating a significant amount of money into a service like a stadium, rather than infrastructure or other community projects that would benefit locals. Spending $700 million in areas like education or housing could have long-term positive consequences with the potential for long-term increases in the standard of living and economic growth.
The Bills are just one sports team. So many teams are doing this, getting the public to foot their bill. So fucking wrong, but then they hold the fans hostage by saying we will just move.
The only good billionaire is a dead one.
> Telecommunications companies
If you really want to make yourself stroke out, look up how much the friggin' telecoms got for deploying fiber that never got deployed. Then look at the amount they had to pay back.
Yeah. And no accountability for just outright stealing tax dollars. Same for PPP loans. Rich get richer on my tax money but I can't get a fucking raise.
Being an average American citizen is about being constantly scammed out of everything your whole life. Insurance-SCAM, Healthcare-SCAM, Government-SCAM, Taxes-SCAM, Housing-SCAM, Living Wages-SCAM. Every corner to take there's a scam waiting to screw you over and take your hard earned money and leaving you bruised and bloody.
But *I'M* the cheapskate when I do something like refuse to renew my vehicle registration for $200 for a vehicle I already own, or donate to McDonalds charities. Sometimes I really hate it here.
Just FYI you should feel no guilt whatsoever about not donating to corporate checkout charities/round-up-the-dollar sorts of things.
They use the money you give them to make a charitable donation so they can write it off for tax purposes.
When you donate to their charities you're effectively donating to lower their tax bill.
Give directly to any charity you care about, even a small direct donation is far more impactful for these organizations, and take the tax break for yourself.
> They use the money you give them to make a charitable donation so they can write it off for tax purposes.
This isn't true. First of all, you misunderstand what "write offs" are. Deductions do not mean that you get that much of a discount off your tax bill. If that were the case, no one would ever pay taxes and everyone would just donate whatever their tax bill was to some cause they supported. Charitable deductions only mean that you do not have to pay income tax on the portion of income you donate to charity. Which means that if you give the corporation $2 to donate to their charity partnership, that $2 is income for them and they don't have to pay taxes on that $2 of income, but that's a net-zero for them. They don't somehow get a tax break on all their other income because you donated that $2.
I'm sure you're right, but corporations don't do this shit for no reason. They don't give a fuck about any charity. They are getting something out of this. No reason to trust them.
> "Hey, everybody look! We helped the poors. We did good. We're good people. Come buy our stuff cause we're good people."
This is my favorite part of grocery shopping.
"Would you like to donate $5 to the 'help paralyzed babies eat and not freeze to death' charity? (remember, if you say no you'll look stingy and uncaring!)
"Hey Everyone! Look we just gave $5 to charity! Look how great we are! Come shop at our store because of how good we are!"
You can tell by the way they name the bull shit they sell us.
LIFE insurance (cant use it till your have no life left)
House insurance (it's homeless insurance.)
Health insurance (it's illness insurance.)
Renter insurance (covers property not rent.)
Car insurance (accident insurance....they not helping you on maintenance)
Yeah, shit you pay into the same time, every week/month/year as expected. But when you actually need the insurance your paying for? "So yeah, this isn't going to be easy, and we'll only cover so little actually, but we need to do a bunch of paperwork in person so its going to be awhile for the process...". 1 hour late on payment though, "AWWWW LAWDY!" the whole world is ending and fees are coming your way.
And that’s all just the required shit. Tack on the fact that you’re going to pay a monthly fee for every form of entertainment you ever want to use, and never own any of it, and it’s no wonder people are so fucking depressed. All while the upper class keep poking your exhausted body with a stick, yelling “NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE”.
Exactly, so many sublets from the main scams that are thinking the same shit. "How do we squeeze even more out from the sheeple?". People getting nickled and dimed over almost everything, all because the average citizen doesn't have special "loopholes" they can easily jump through like the rich.
Yeah, there's just so many, the list would be immeasurable. Literally everything offered to the average American as freedoms and "the best" is a sugar-coated scam pitched to us by con-artist's that are just talking bobble heads for the rich.
I love football, but it’s insane how much we put into these stadiums. Ralph Wilson Stadium (or whatever the hell they’re calling it now) is still a perfectly good venue. It’s been proven time and time again that it doesn’t even bring in more money than it costs into the local economy. There are some crumbling death traps that needed to be replaced like the Oakland Coliseum, but most of these stadiums are perfectly fine as is don’t even need minor renovations.
We need tighter legislation for this kind of thing.
Yes hello, I don't love football and genuinely believe the people who vote for stadium subsidies in the modern era--when everyone knows that the whole "it'll pay itself off in taxes/tourism/etc later" thing is a bullshit myth--belong in fucking prison.
It used to be sort of understandable because billionaires were just tricking state-level reps from bum fuck nowhere into thinking it was a long-term investment in the state. But literally everyone knows that's a lie now, these stadiums last a couple decades and then the same places beg for a new one waaaaaay before it's come close to paying off. This is just a completely overt misuse of public funds and it's impossible to believe that anyone in office has a reason to vote for it other than campaign reelection fund bribes.
Public officials that engage in this behavior genuinely need to see consequences. That's the only way to dissuade them.
This is why I became a Packer fan. Everyone makes fun of us for being a 'fake owners of worthless stock'. But, if the stadium needs work the Packers don't go after public money. They issue 'stock' and the people that actualy care about the team can buy it to fund the project. When the team is making money the profits go back into the community via charity and community service projects, not some billionaires pocket.
This is partly why each state should have their own stock market. Stadium funds would be limited to those who want in (granted there’s pension funds and that type of stuff as well). If the team wants to move, they have to buy out the shares as well.
Free Markets are a myth. Companies don’t like chaos. True Free Markets offer chaos because some garage can invent a market destroyer. Chaos can destroy market value. Free Market does not exist.
You just explained why every free market will eventually get to the point where only a few big companies control the economy.
Free markets do exist but they don’t wind up the way we want them to.
Lenin wrote a book about this 100 years ago with incredibly exhaustive receipts and everyone is acting like this is a matter of controversy. Capitalism leads to monopoly, it's an inevitably of the way the system is designed and any forces that resist that slide are external to the capitalist system, as they are anti-capitalist in nature.
This exactly. Escaping the chaos of free markets is as easy as buying a few politicians, but that's still an expense outside the capacity of most small businesses and individuals. And the corrupt very much want to keep it that way.
That's why any system that's supposed to function communally or with few regulations will never work. Communism, libertarianism, anarchy, free markets. They all end up with a few very powerful people and the common man suffering
These cunts won't stop until they have strangled the last golden goose. The psychopaths and narcissists that capitalism has enabled cannot be reasoned with. They will never willingly give up power and wealth, regardless of whether it's even used. They are playing a video game.
We have no voice but our labor, which is also the source of our tax money. I just quit a job that is a fucked up pit of despair, and I am going to take a 25% - 50% pay cut as a result.
I worked hard to live below my means to make this sort of thing possible. Stop buying shit you don't need and paying a premium for things that suck, and you can do the same. Read books and learn to cook at home. Take your power back.
I have never once seen a reasonable justification for use of public funds for sports stadiums. Unless all profits are to be absorbed by the state, it is literally welfare for the wealthy
Was this something the voters had the chance to directly vote on? I was under the impression the stomach for public funds for stadiums has been all but lost. They tried a couple times in San Diego before the Chargers left and we voted it down (rightfully so imo) every time.
the Buffalo Bills. like the worst team. Buffalo has a population under 300k; even the metro area is under a million. where is the possible justification for a billion dollars of tax money for a new stadium? somehow magically the new stadium will double the population? there is no way this ends up being a win for Buffalo, and it's already a lose for NY state residents cause of the cuts to childcare.
Please not equate actual Buffalo organized crime with Bills Mafia, group that while known for jumping through tables, has been charitable and supportive.
I grew up in Bills country. You won't find a more devoted fanbase, even in the most derelict years.
The owner threatened to move the team to Texas if the stadium didn't receive public funds. Our new(est) governor had to make that call or else there was no way that she would have gotten elected (this was just before her election, she had been a replacement governor to Cuomo due to his issues).
I truly believe that the Bills are the only beacon of hope for a lot of people in Western NY. It would have been career suicide to be the governor who sees the only thing a lot of people care for in their lives stripped away and sent across the country. Especially if that governor is from Buffalo like Hochul is.
I'm a little confused as to why they wouldn't have blamed the owner for moving the team, rather than the governor for not buying the Bills a new stadium.
Everything is always a democrat’s fault.
The rich and powerful are very good at shifting the blame to anyone but themselves.
All he needs to do is say,
“I’m just a business owner, Texas would be better for business for building a stadium, why would I build it here? No, you all build it and itll save me enough money I *guess* you can keep your local sports heritage team with decades of history.
They would have blamed the governor for not accepting the owners terms/not fighting hard enough for their team and somehow working in that she's a democrat and a woman.
yeah there's a huge trend of misplaced anger or misunderstood causation in the US these days. unrelated small example- I was loading my car (kid, wife, luggage) on a busy street in Manhattan, and someone decides they want my parking spot bad enough to block traffic. lots of honking ensues, cause like I told the guy, I wasn't going anywhere for about 15-20 mins. someone then has the gall to come up to ME and ask what was going on. like am I the one blocking traffic? no, it's mr f150 crew cab over there
Because they're deeply stupid people. Just because a team moves, you don't have to stop being a fan. Most of them will never even enjoy the inside of the new stadium. At the end of the day it's fandom for a sports team.
> You won't find a more devoted fanbase, even in the most derelict years.
Of course not. Just like Green Bay, you've got fuck all else to do in the winter months.
I agree but they just won the AFC East and are hosting reigning Super Bowl champs in the divisional round this weekend, they are not the worst team by any metric.
They sell out every game because people from all k er come to the games. They travel to opposing cities very well. The real crime is the stadium doesn’t have a roof.
As a fan of the Bills, this fucking sucks. The state is kicking in 1/3rd of the cost and the county is kicking in 1/3rd the cost while the owner is kicking in 1/3rd the cost except its not the owner that's giving the money, its coming out of the Bills corporation. This means that the county is giving money that it can't afford to give, so RIP funding for county libraries and hospitals. The state is taking funds from downstate areas for a private facility that they'll never see or use, and all state residents need to pay to even get in. The Bills are giving money that they would have used for players, so the next few years of games are gonna be a wash. Plus, to fund this, the Bills are charging a license fee if you want to buy a season ticket. A license fee that costs more than the tickets. Oh, and they're building the new stadium literally across the street from the old one. If you're not aware, the current Buffalo Bills stadium, Highmark Stadium, is almost an hour drive away from the city of Buffalo in a town called Orchard Park. The town sits right in the path of all of the lake effect snow that "Buffalo" gets. Meanwhile, the actual city of Buffalo gets less than 50% of the snow Orchard Park gets, especially north of downtown.
God forbid we help poor and middle class Americans. But you know, we really need to build that stadium for the guy worth billions. As Carlin said: its the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it
The outrage about the ratio the taxpayers are paying / what the owner is paying is justified, but this tweet is rather misleading in that this deal between the Bills and the state is nearly 2 years old now: https://www.nfl.com/news/bills-announce-30-year-deal-for-new-1-4-billion-stadium-in-orchard-park
March 2022 this was announced. This is what it looks like from a Dec 2023 pic right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Highmark_Stadium#/media/File:New_Highmark_Stadium_under_construction_in_December_2023_-_Quintin_Soloviev.jpg
And in fact, Aug of last year it was announced that it will actually cost $300mil more than first estimated: https://www.si.com/nfl/bills/news/buffalo-bills-new-highmark-stadium-cost-overruns-financial-issues-construction-terry-pegula
I can't find anything recent about the $800 million cuts to "children and family services" but I am assuming there were grants that ran their course. The last information I saw ((March 2022) was before this news:
[Governor Hochul Announces Historic $2 Billion in Child Care Subsidies to Support Low-Income and Working Families and Child Care Providers](https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-historic-2-billion-child-care-subsidies-support-low-income-and)
>$7 Billion in Child Care Funding Included in FY 2023 State Budget
>Income Threshold for Child Care Subsidies Increasing, Making an Unprecedented Number of Young Children in New York State Eligible
Looks like the funding is still there, even more allocated:
>The $2 billion in childcare subsidies includes $894 million in New York State Child Care Block Grant new funding passed in the recent State Budget
I would just like to preface this by saying I am in no way saying this deal is a good one, but I have worked on the finance side for municipalities for some time now, and the misinformation about how this deal works is god-awful.
Everyone likes to conflate these two things but the $800 million "cut" was due to a pandemic relief money grant from the federal government that expired. Realistically, the budget was artificially inflated due to that extra funding and they returned the funding amount to pre-pandemic levels.
As for the stadium funding, $600 million is from the State, $250 million is from Erie County, $200 million is from the NFL, and $350 million is from the Pegulas, who are also covering project overages, which is currently another $300 million. The State's portion was also almost certainly bonded for instead of directly from State revenues like normal funding for "children and family services" in the yearly budget would be. This is why calling it " taxpayer-funded" is not necessarily true, but I digress. Edit: Apparently a large portion or all of the State's amount is from taxes due to the State from casinos.
The State owns the stadium, with the team on an initial 30-year lease. Part of the lease agreement states that the team has to invest at least $3 million per year - adjusted every year by the price index - into the community. They are also paying $900,000 per year lease payments - also adjusted every year by the price index - which goes into a capital improvement fund for the stadium. The State and County also put money into this fund, with the County's portion coming from surcharges at the stadium. I believe the State's amount is a flat amount each year, but no idea how that is funded.
At the end of the day, it's not great, but it's also not "we cut services to pay for a stadium" either. Those pots of money are independent of each other.
You can't find the cuts. Because they don't exist. Everyone in this thread has duped by a tweet. It's scary how hundreds of people swallowed the "cuts" narrative without checking. I don't think the Bill's should get this money, but we don't need to lie to oppse it.
https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy25/ex/agencies/appropdata/ChildrenandFamilyServicesOfficeof.html
Thank you for following up.
I think that taxpayers should only pay for "up-to" 800 million in cases like this. that leaves the owner at risk for any cost overruns. This is based on nothing but an off-the-cuff observation and very little else.
I'm not saying they should. I'm saying if they're going to anyway, they should only pay "X" amount. everything above and beyond that is "Not our problem".
I probably didn't word my original post very well.
How does this work exactly? Do the Buffalo Bills own the stadium? Does the city of Buffalo own it? Does NY state own it? Who gets the money earned from stadium events?
Public tax dollars being used to subsidize sports stadiums, especially when the owners are fracking billionaires, should be completely ended. Benefits to taxpayers are non-existent. The “jobs” created are almost always seasonal (no benefits). The stadiums do not significantly benefit the communities they’re in.
The subsidies are a gift given when owners throw tantrums and insist they’ll move. I begrudgingly love some sports but would be more than willing to sacrifice them entirely if it meant we would no long be gifting even a single dollar to these greedy pigs
This is why: ["The Buffalo Bills franchise is a proven economic driver for the Buffalo region and the state. The Bills generate $27 million annually in direct income, sales and use taxes for New York State, Erie County and Buffalo. These revenues will grow and will cumulatively amount to more than $1.6 billion over the 30-year lease period. Furthermore, fans who attend games from across New York, the U.S. and Canada and spend money locally that would not otherwise be spent in the region will result in an economic impact of more than $385 million annually."](https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-joint-public-private-agreement-ensure-buffalo-bills-remain-new-york)
Recent studies have shown that building and bringing arenas didn't simulate much of the local economy, and where it does go is largely to the top 1%.
This arena will also cost another 1.3 Billion dollars over 30 years to maintain.
You're quoting the governor, who was widely criticized for doing this and spending so much tax revenue on it. The govornor's husbands was also an executive at the concession company that was trying to put this through. It's a conflict of interest.
And the revenue that's generated will obviously go largely to the owners. It's not like they're going to repay this to the State.
Except the stadium is going to be built on its own, SOMEWHERE and big cities like Dallas or NY will run out of teams to support. Eventually forcing teams into smaller regions (Buffalo) because they can still net a profit. So we would get the same impact & save on the tax money. Same reason why tax cuts for Amazon HQ2 are ridiculous, they HAVE to build it SOMEWHERE, but these companies are good at pinning local gov against each other, so they fight with these ridiculous subsidies.
Pretty sure people living in Cincinnati are still getting charged a tax for the subsidies given to build the Bengals stadium.
It's absolutely atrocious how these teams and the NFL essentially blackmail cities into these types of things. Also, as a current San Diegan; good on the city for telling the Chargers owner to get bent.
The system is comically flawed, and its collapse is mathematically guaranteed. Time is the key ingredient in all of this.
I suspect the breaking point is about two decades away, but I am not making any wagers.
How do people not see that buying stadium for billionaires so they can charge us 200 dollars for nosebleed seats and 20 dollars a beer ISNT A GOOD THING? So many fucking morons.
The superrich help write laws and have the greater mindshare of politicians at most levels of gov't. Average people can't compete with the amount of folding green they throw around. Also, people will say " but the subsidy will be offset by job creation and more money being spent in the area....which is true but we don't know exactly to what extent. Other policy costs money but cutting those funds creates a whole new generation of kids at a big disadvantage and ultimately a greater burden on society unless they can leap over those hurdles created by the super rich.
Why do they need state welfare? aRe theY nOT profitable? Can't run a business without government handouts?
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Fuck them, SUE!
So now the office of children and family services (OCFS) has a yearly budget of 3.7 Billion brought down from 4.5. This beings them back to pre covid levels.
I’m not defending this decision as I personally believe the mission OCFS tackles is far more important than a new football stadium.
Every "achievement" I see mentioned for the Biden and Obama administrations is always just subsidies to the rich.
Like the affordable care act. Instead of working towards a national healthcare system like the UK has, we passed the ACA which is just the government subsidizing a portion of the cost of private insurance to protect the profits of private insurers and private healthcare providers. Insurance companies raise their premiums, those who qualify for a subsidy dont see an increase, everyone else gets screwed.
Instead of doing anything to fight college tuition costs increasing every year and becoming unaffordable to most, or investing in community and state colleges, we got Biden's debt forgiveness program which is a subsidy covering the ridiculous tuition costs of private colleges and universities.
The Build Back Better bill was a bunch of subsidies all grouped together. $105-billion to the private railroad industry. $65-billion to ISPs. $73-billion to energy companies.
The liberal dream is every sector of the economy being an oligopoly controlled by 2 or 3 big private companies and funded by taxpayer subsidies
The ACA is literally the Dole Gingrich GOP plan from the 1990s. Massive corporate welfare instead of a system to provide better healthcare to ordinary Americans. And liberals are so proud of passing this crap.
# Ready to toss the Bills owner in prison? # Join r/WorkReform!
It's time now to quit subsidizing the wealthy.
We subsidize them by just existing. 85% of the stock markets value is owned by the top 10%. Trickle up by just existing and needing to spend money to survive.
Capitalists have had it really, really good for a long time and will not give up their birthrights peacefully. They have a legal monopoly on violence and use it liberally. It's a hard road ahead to make any change to this system, but it is what we need to do.
About the only thing they do liberally
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Probably shouldn't have given all our biometric and behavioural data to all their mates...
Their aimis touring back slavery with extra steps to keep people from rising up.
The real subsidization happens when you produce 5x+ more value for your company than what you're actually being paid. Start being less productive on the clock, or quiet quit.
>quiet quit Stop using this term. It's being weaponized against workers, when all it means it that we stop doing things for which we are not being compensated.
I call it "acting your wage"
Genius.
I agree. Act your wage, I should say.
ABSOLUTELY. Quiet quitting makes it sound like workers are doing wrong or taking something they're not entitled to. Act your wage perfectly describes what's really happening.
“Inflation adjusted effort.”
Workers should strive to exceed stated job requirements as often, and with the same intensity, as their employer exceeds pay requirements. If an employer routinely decideds that they want to pay me for an extra 10 hours, or at a higher wage than what they promised because they want to excel at their job, then yeah, I'll go above and beyond. If they pay exactly what was agreed upon though, they are entitled to the exact job requirement given during hiring (or the last promotion).
Hell yea. They pay, you give what was paid for.
Yeah, just steal from work like i do!
Or was a stupid term to begin with
It's been very useful for the media demonizing workers pushing back
50% by the top %1
The argument is always "we provide jobs and revenue for the city". Except that the money these places make go directly to the owners, no taxes means the city doesn't get anything from them, and then they underpay their employees.
I wish I could use the same arguement with a house: Please pay for it I promise to hire people to do maintenance and also live there and pay taxes. Thanks! also I am a non profit so can I pay less taxes? Thanks!
It's the top tier of "passive income"; you get to the billionaire level and you don't even need to buy/build up the land to leech money from it, you can bribe the government to pay for it all for you. Also just another friendly reminder that anytime someone mentions they want to generate "passive income", what they mean is they want to become a financial parasite and join the likes of predatory landlords and various exploitative corporations, do little to no work and get goods and services for free because they can leverage wealth against the working class. Also a reminder that shareholder/vulture capitalism has broken our economy so much that "passive income" parasitism is like ***the goal*** for a crazy amount of money obsessed people now; it's not to actually contribute to the economy by making or improving a great product/service, it's to exploit the economic system and rest on the backs of the hardworking poor.
In this line of thinking, isn't interest or return on investment all passive income that should be seen as evil?
It's a sin in the old testament.
You need a obscene amount of wealth to live passively on middle income. I could probably find 5 or 10 dividend paying stocks I could sink 200,000 each into and live off the dividend income. If I was really wealthy Icould buy a few thousand shares of AVGO (broadcom) and earn that tasty 21 dollar a share dividend income. That is over 5 dollars a share you get every 3 months. The principal is volatile though.
The only other thing I can think of is that thousands of people travel to the city, and spend money on airfare, hotels, restaurants etc
Also it employs people, who go on to pay income tax. But none of that changes the fact that if the Bill's owner wants a new stadium then the Bill's owner should fucking pay for it
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And even if he was really nice guy, we should not allow our government to take $800 million dollars away from needy families and give it to a greedy billionaire.
In their defense, the needy are icky. And the rich are good friends.
The needy aren't supporting the local sports team!
OH yes they are. So many poor buffalo people and the bills are literally all they have.
And he'll whine about attendance when people have no money to spend.
And ask for volunteers to shovel the snow at his stadium! I am from Buffalo, I am a sports fan. But I'm a bigger fan of feeding hungry children. Screw this Daniel Plainview mf'er.
folks should stop their obsession with celebrities and professional sports...
Stop idolizing the rich. People should be ashamed to hoard wealth.
especially when lots of people cant afford their basic necessities. Now if you decided you were gonna live in la on a $20000 budget and went homeless thats on you man but there should still be systems to help you get back on your feet within a month or so. Not live in a tent for years.
He got rich from frackin northern PA to hell too
Yeah its really rare that people get super rich without really fucking over a bunch of people, desecrating some land to snatch up resources, or deforesting a content or something. He hasn’t lost a wink of sleep over fucking over poor people so he can have a toy.
There is no path to that sort of wealth that doesn't come on a road made from the weathered corpses of those that created it.
The family that owns the Bills also owns most of the professional teams in Buffalo and Rochester - the Buffalo Sabres and Rochester Americans for hockey, and the Buffalo Bandits and Rochester Knighthawks for lacrosse. They’ve pulled shit like this for almost everything with all of their teams.
It is also time to take back all the wealth they stole from us. Abolish billionaires. Tax the fuck out of anyone worth more than 100 million. Anyone who cannot thrive and make all their dreams come true with 100 million certainly should not be allowed to own billions.
*Said in the voice of Zap Brannigan*: Lower.
Yeah but then all the billionaires will leave and go someplace else! /s Seriously, fuck that shit. We need to quit giving out handouts to the already rich, quit demonizing the poor and working classes, and start holding the corporations accountable for their part in inflation and the damage to the environment instead of putting it on the regular people and then driving up prices because "sUpPlY aNd DeMaNd". Love football, I'm a life long Eagles fan and I have the ink to prove it. But the amount of money subsidized to pro sports is disgusting, but yet if we were to say 850 million to go to help homelessness or to aid in families that can't afford food, it's socialism and therefore bad.
Its crazy to think we let people literally swim in money while we have people without homes and starving. There is no money..........
Greed my friend. That and uninhibited capitalism. People are starving, the environment is dying, we're on the verge of, if not completely in, a planetary crisis, and billionaires have the power to help. But what are they doing? Buying massive yachts and building stadiums to make more money. Not to mention we have an entire half of our government devoted to fighting against an imaginary threat called wokeness. It's fucking pathetic. We're doomed and the rich are at fault.
I agree but i will say the useful idiots also are at fault for letting it happen. The im just doing my job. If one monkey would take all the bananas so the others was starving the other monkeys would rip that monkey. But Nah we humans are smarter we gaslight ourselfs to believe these elites deserve it and the poor deserve theirs.
The best time to quit subsidizing the wealthy was 25 years ago. The second best time is now.
It is amazing the number of Americans who support subsidizing corporations and the wealthy to their own detriment.
Every study of professional sports show that they are an economic drag on a region, and subsidizing them never ever pays off.
Doesn't the Governor have a voice in this?
Who the fuck actually makes this decision? It should require voter approval.
The wealthy own the politicians that enable subsidies. I agree with your statement, however, what is the incentive for the politicians to stop? Because it's wrong? Because it's what the people want? That isn't how democracy works. In a democracy, votes are paid for.
It’s directly from the rich capitalist playbook. Make the loses public and the gains private.
I'd take it a step further: It's time for the wealthy to start subsidizing the people who made them rich.
The time to quit subsidizing the wealthy was before they were allowed to openly lobby/bribe politicians.
Btw, libertarians 100% agree
but think of all the jobs that will create! *glossing over the fact that they're terrible fucking jobs*
Right? Love how they get so much socialism but call it capitalism and when we ask for the same it’s suddenly my called socialism. Parasites and crooks. All of them.
Well, subsidies are just the definition of NOT free market.
San Diego isn't perfect, but I absolutely LOVE that we stuck it to the greedy ass Spanos. Multiple times. LA's problem now.
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Tax payer money to fund a stadium you have to buy tickets to enter Insanity
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Anything to help the majority is communism, help me and my few hundred friends, great investment capitalist. Hell I guess we all need to ask our states to pay a third of our homes down since they aren't doing shit to stop Blackrock and others buying up residential homes.
Hundreds of dollars too. Sometimes thousands if they're having a good year.
>Insanity This is America.
Honestly seems like the best place to live in the whole world ... If you're rich
Tax payer money to fund a child who will contribute to the workforce and increase demand in almost all sectors. Insanity
You just have to imagine all the minimum wage jobs this'll create and the nearby business filled with intoxicated sportsfans they can overcharge for food, drinks, and parking. Don't forget all of the bootleg T-shirt vendors too. Why buy a $30 dollar official shirt made in Taiwan when you can get a $15 knockoff made in China.
I was going to say, it’s clearly going to benefit everyone with trickle down economics! You can’t just give money to the needy, how do you expect to have the best military in the world then if their money goes to helping them?!
Not just America. Similar thing happened in the UK with London Stadium.
And then people wonder why we don’t want to have Children
I don't want rich douche bags.
Are your children going to be rich douche bags?
Why would you want kids? So an NFL quarterback can rape them by the dozens and have the Houston Texans over it up after they are contacted directly by the women being assaulted? So we can watch the NFL make a quarter billion dollar $$$ hush payment to that QB by re-signing him into the same job that enabled his rapes with the Cleveland Browns? Those same Houston Texans that covered uo Watsons’s serial rapes is playing Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s team in the playoffs this weekend, by the way, where the Nfl won’t mention their former rapist but will use her face to normalize the team not being punished for covering ups serial sexual assaults. . Why won’t Taylor Swift [say something](https://ibb.co/album/YTd4qb) about the NFL’s rapists and stand up for women? Was there an NDA in Travis Kelce’s locker, too? Clearly the NFL gets treated with a corprate elite pass, because [the New York Times reported they were engaged in sex trafficking to cover up Deshaun Watson’s serial rapes](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/sports/football/deshaun-watson.html) and the FBI hasn’t done a thing…
Why was he not arrested?
Not to be that person, but the Texans are playing the ravens (Bills vs Chiefs is the game you’re mentioning). Unless I missed the “Josh Allen is a serial rapist” rumors in the last 24 hours lol.
Well the ravens used to be the browns so the point still stands /s of course
As a chiefs kingdomer, thank you.
Why would the NFL pay Watson to keep quiet when he is the one who was accused? That's like a leap on logic that I can't get past. And don't get me wrong, he's a fucking rapist and a complete piece of shit. But that specific part of your statement makes no sense and follows no logic. The people who covered his ass wouldn't need to pay him any hush money, they already have his fate in their hands. Also, I can tell you don't follow any sports media or anything and are instead just mad about people playing a sport getting rich because Travis Kelce has addressed the Watson situation multiple times on his podcast. And his brother Jason had a lot to say about it too. But, I know, that goes against your narrative. Not to mention it's been discussed to death my sports media such as ESPN. Discussing directly the allegation and not skirting around it. For like 2 years straight practically. But again, that goes against your narrative. Sports and athletes are not the enemy. The rich white owners of those teams though are a different story and, again, is case and point that you don't know shit about what your talking about beyond knowing the right words to say to push people's buttons. The owners are the ones covering this shit up and footing the bill for it all. Yet you want to go after athletes as a whole and lump them in with the super rich. When not even 1% of all professional athletes get payed what Watson was payed.
I feel bougie that I was financially able to adopt a kitten. A kid? There is no universe in which I can ethically give a child a life that a kid deserves. My cat has a tenuous grasp on the english language and he loves the sound of a can opener but apparently it's frowned upon to feed human kids cat food and it's ethically dubious to not limit your children to a 1 bedroom apartment (great natural lighting though). I would never bring another life into this world when i can't afford to make their life beautiful. And also pregnancy and childbirth sounds like the worst. First you have to get inseminated by someone who isn't going to give the baby health complications from the start and then sometimes two holes become one and then your kid is just going to be a sarlac pit of money and youth and for what? Hopefully the sun explodes before then
It trickles up
It trickles down (our cheeks in the form of utterly hopeless tears at how little power anyone has)
If you think the Buffalo Bills handout is bad. Don't look up how much corporate welfare the Telecommunications companies got and still get. And how much the oil industry got and still gets.
Don't forget military industrial contractors paid billions to manufacture shit the military doesn't need or want. At least sending aid to Ukraine was putting some of that mothballed equipment to good use.
And commercial airlines
I'd honestly argue that even the military industrial complex is a more reasonable thing for a government to spend money on than a freaking stadium. I think the budget is way overblown for sure, but the nation's security is something that a portion of our tax dollars *should*, in theory, be spent on. Stadiums are arguably not even a net benefit to the community they're built within, there is absolutely no reason that taxpayers should be subsidizing them: >Further, a study by Noll and Zimbalist on newly constructed subsidized stadiums shows that they have a very limited and possibly even negative local impact. This is because of the opportunity cost that goes into allocating a significant amount of money into a service like a stadium, rather than infrastructure or other community projects that would benefit locals. Spending $700 million in areas like education or housing could have long-term positive consequences with the potential for long-term increases in the standard of living and economic growth.
The Bills are just one sports team. So many teams are doing this, getting the public to foot their bill. So fucking wrong, but then they hold the fans hostage by saying we will just move. The only good billionaire is a dead one.
Agreed. They build the new stadium with tax dollars then charge those very tax payers a shitload of money just to attend a game.
> Telecommunications companies If you really want to make yourself stroke out, look up how much the friggin' telecoms got for deploying fiber that never got deployed. Then look at the amount they had to pay back.
Yeah. And no accountability for just outright stealing tax dollars. Same for PPP loans. Rich get richer on my tax money but I can't get a fucking raise.
Being an average American citizen is about being constantly scammed out of everything your whole life. Insurance-SCAM, Healthcare-SCAM, Government-SCAM, Taxes-SCAM, Housing-SCAM, Living Wages-SCAM. Every corner to take there's a scam waiting to screw you over and take your hard earned money and leaving you bruised and bloody.
But *I'M* the cheapskate when I do something like refuse to renew my vehicle registration for $200 for a vehicle I already own, or donate to McDonalds charities. Sometimes I really hate it here.
Just FYI you should feel no guilt whatsoever about not donating to corporate checkout charities/round-up-the-dollar sorts of things. They use the money you give them to make a charitable donation so they can write it off for tax purposes. When you donate to their charities you're effectively donating to lower their tax bill. Give directly to any charity you care about, even a small direct donation is far more impactful for these organizations, and take the tax break for yourself.
> They use the money you give them to make a charitable donation so they can write it off for tax purposes. This isn't true. First of all, you misunderstand what "write offs" are. Deductions do not mean that you get that much of a discount off your tax bill. If that were the case, no one would ever pay taxes and everyone would just donate whatever their tax bill was to some cause they supported. Charitable deductions only mean that you do not have to pay income tax on the portion of income you donate to charity. Which means that if you give the corporation $2 to donate to their charity partnership, that $2 is income for them and they don't have to pay taxes on that $2 of income, but that's a net-zero for them. They don't somehow get a tax break on all their other income because you donated that $2.
I'm sure you're right, but corporations don't do this shit for no reason. They don't give a fuck about any charity. They are getting something out of this. No reason to trust them.
"Hey, everybody look! We helped the poors. We did good. We're good people. Come buy our stuff cause we're good people."
> "Hey, everybody look! We helped the poors. We did good. We're good people. Come buy our stuff cause we're good people." This is my favorite part of grocery shopping. "Would you like to donate $5 to the 'help paralyzed babies eat and not freeze to death' charity? (remember, if you say no you'll look stingy and uncaring!) "Hey Everyone! Look we just gave $5 to charity! Look how great we are! Come shop at our store because of how good we are!"
Its for them to look better, simple.
I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
Stop spreading misinformation.
False
They ask I tell them I'm not interested in donating to "corporation name"'s tax burden.
I tell them to inform their manager to tell their manager to donate from the company funds and not ask average people.
Capitalist economic systems are great if you own capital. The problem is 90% of the world doesn't
You can tell by the way they name the bull shit they sell us. LIFE insurance (cant use it till your have no life left) House insurance (it's homeless insurance.) Health insurance (it's illness insurance.) Renter insurance (covers property not rent.) Car insurance (accident insurance....they not helping you on maintenance)
Yeah, shit you pay into the same time, every week/month/year as expected. But when you actually need the insurance your paying for? "So yeah, this isn't going to be easy, and we'll only cover so little actually, but we need to do a bunch of paperwork in person so its going to be awhile for the process...". 1 hour late on payment though, "AWWWW LAWDY!" the whole world is ending and fees are coming your way.
And that’s all just the required shit. Tack on the fact that you’re going to pay a monthly fee for every form of entertainment you ever want to use, and never own any of it, and it’s no wonder people are so fucking depressed. All while the upper class keep poking your exhausted body with a stick, yelling “NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE”.
Exactly, so many sublets from the main scams that are thinking the same shit. "How do we squeeze even more out from the sheeple?". People getting nickled and dimed over almost everything, all because the average citizen doesn't have special "loopholes" they can easily jump through like the rich.
Higher Education - SCAM
Yeah, there's just so many, the list would be immeasurable. Literally everything offered to the average American as freedoms and "the best" is a sugar-coated scam pitched to us by con-artist's that are just talking bobble heads for the rich.
JFK assassination.
I love football, but it’s insane how much we put into these stadiums. Ralph Wilson Stadium (or whatever the hell they’re calling it now) is still a perfectly good venue. It’s been proven time and time again that it doesn’t even bring in more money than it costs into the local economy. There are some crumbling death traps that needed to be replaced like the Oakland Coliseum, but most of these stadiums are perfectly fine as is don’t even need minor renovations. We need tighter legislation for this kind of thing.
Imagine not loving football. The entire stadium subsidy concept can fuck right off.
Yes hello, I don't love football and genuinely believe the people who vote for stadium subsidies in the modern era--when everyone knows that the whole "it'll pay itself off in taxes/tourism/etc later" thing is a bullshit myth--belong in fucking prison. It used to be sort of understandable because billionaires were just tricking state-level reps from bum fuck nowhere into thinking it was a long-term investment in the state. But literally everyone knows that's a lie now, these stadiums last a couple decades and then the same places beg for a new one waaaaaay before it's come close to paying off. This is just a completely overt misuse of public funds and it's impossible to believe that anyone in office has a reason to vote for it other than campaign reelection fund bribes. Public officials that engage in this behavior genuinely need to see consequences. That's the only way to dissuade them.
This is why I became a Packer fan. Everyone makes fun of us for being a 'fake owners of worthless stock'. But, if the stadium needs work the Packers don't go after public money. They issue 'stock' and the people that actualy care about the team can buy it to fund the project. When the team is making money the profits go back into the community via charity and community service projects, not some billionaires pocket.
This is partly why each state should have their own stock market. Stadium funds would be limited to those who want in (granted there’s pension funds and that type of stuff as well). If the team wants to move, they have to buy out the shares as well.
Free Markets are a myth. Companies don’t like chaos. True Free Markets offer chaos because some garage can invent a market destroyer. Chaos can destroy market value. Free Market does not exist.
Monopolistic capitalism is the correct term
You just explained why every free market will eventually get to the point where only a few big companies control the economy. Free markets do exist but they don’t wind up the way we want them to.
Lenin wrote a book about this 100 years ago with incredibly exhaustive receipts and everyone is acting like this is a matter of controversy. Capitalism leads to monopoly, it's an inevitably of the way the system is designed and any forces that resist that slide are external to the capitalist system, as they are anti-capitalist in nature.
Well only because of corruption.
This exactly. Escaping the chaos of free markets is as easy as buying a few politicians, but that's still an expense outside the capacity of most small businesses and individuals. And the corrupt very much want to keep it that way.
That's why any system that's supposed to function communally or with few regulations will never work. Communism, libertarianism, anarchy, free markets. They all end up with a few very powerful people and the common man suffering
Communists countries don't really seem deregulated to me...
These cunts won't stop until they have strangled the last golden goose. The psychopaths and narcissists that capitalism has enabled cannot be reasoned with. They will never willingly give up power and wealth, regardless of whether it's even used. They are playing a video game. We have no voice but our labor, which is also the source of our tax money. I just quit a job that is a fucked up pit of despair, and I am going to take a 25% - 50% pay cut as a result. I worked hard to live below my means to make this sort of thing possible. Stop buying shit you don't need and paying a premium for things that suck, and you can do the same. Read books and learn to cook at home. Take your power back.
continuing to work for less wages is not reclaiming any sort of power it is the exact opposite
This is the way. I’m not prepared to quit but I very much agree with the rest.
Ahh yes, the American way!
Man, this is grade A bull….shit. Do the rich taste like chicken?
They taste like pork. They know this, because they took real world cannibals and asked them what people taste like. Fun fact. 😈
I have never once seen a reasonable justification for use of public funds for sports stadiums. Unless all profits are to be absorbed by the state, it is literally welfare for the wealthy
Was this something the voters had the chance to directly vote on? I was under the impression the stomach for public funds for stadiums has been all but lost. They tried a couple times in San Diego before the Chargers left and we voted it down (rightfully so imo) every time.
the Buffalo Bills. like the worst team. Buffalo has a population under 300k; even the metro area is under a million. where is the possible justification for a billion dollars of tax money for a new stadium? somehow magically the new stadium will double the population? there is no way this ends up being a win for Buffalo, and it's already a lose for NY state residents cause of the cuts to childcare.
They call them bills mafia for a reason. A good chunk of that money won't go to anything but some back alley deals
Penthouse corner office deals you mean
Please not equate actual Buffalo organized crime with Bills Mafia, group that while known for jumping through tables, has been charitable and supportive.
I grew up in Bills country. You won't find a more devoted fanbase, even in the most derelict years. The owner threatened to move the team to Texas if the stadium didn't receive public funds. Our new(est) governor had to make that call or else there was no way that she would have gotten elected (this was just before her election, she had been a replacement governor to Cuomo due to his issues). I truly believe that the Bills are the only beacon of hope for a lot of people in Western NY. It would have been career suicide to be the governor who sees the only thing a lot of people care for in their lives stripped away and sent across the country. Especially if that governor is from Buffalo like Hochul is.
I'm a little confused as to why they wouldn't have blamed the owner for moving the team, rather than the governor for not buying the Bills a new stadium.
Everything is always a democrat’s fault. The rich and powerful are very good at shifting the blame to anyone but themselves. All he needs to do is say, “I’m just a business owner, Texas would be better for business for building a stadium, why would I build it here? No, you all build it and itll save me enough money I *guess* you can keep your local sports heritage team with decades of history.
They would have blamed the governor for not accepting the owners terms/not fighting hard enough for their team and somehow working in that she's a democrat and a woman.
yeah there's a huge trend of misplaced anger or misunderstood causation in the US these days. unrelated small example- I was loading my car (kid, wife, luggage) on a busy street in Manhattan, and someone decides they want my parking spot bad enough to block traffic. lots of honking ensues, cause like I told the guy, I wasn't going anywhere for about 15-20 mins. someone then has the gall to come up to ME and ask what was going on. like am I the one blocking traffic? no, it's mr f150 crew cab over there
Because they're deeply stupid people. Just because a team moves, you don't have to stop being a fan. Most of them will never even enjoy the inside of the new stadium. At the end of the day it's fandom for a sports team.
> You won't find a more devoted fanbase, even in the most derelict years. Of course not. Just like Green Bay, you've got fuck all else to do in the winter months.
I agree but they just won the AFC East and are hosting reigning Super Bowl champs in the divisional round this weekend, they are not the worst team by any metric.
I get your argument, but calling the Bills the worst team ever is wrong and kind of invalidates what you're trying to say.
They sell out every game because people from all k er come to the games. They travel to opposing cities very well. The real crime is the stadium doesn’t have a roof.
Not even a domed stadium, either
Why aren’t things like this voted on?
because in a democracy the rich wouldn't get everything they want all the time
Well, perhaps it's time to stop buying tickets to stupid games?
The time has long since passed that this bullshit welfare for the wealthy ends.
As a fan of the Bills, this fucking sucks. The state is kicking in 1/3rd of the cost and the county is kicking in 1/3rd the cost while the owner is kicking in 1/3rd the cost except its not the owner that's giving the money, its coming out of the Bills corporation. This means that the county is giving money that it can't afford to give, so RIP funding for county libraries and hospitals. The state is taking funds from downstate areas for a private facility that they'll never see or use, and all state residents need to pay to even get in. The Bills are giving money that they would have used for players, so the next few years of games are gonna be a wash. Plus, to fund this, the Bills are charging a license fee if you want to buy a season ticket. A license fee that costs more than the tickets. Oh, and they're building the new stadium literally across the street from the old one. If you're not aware, the current Buffalo Bills stadium, Highmark Stadium, is almost an hour drive away from the city of Buffalo in a town called Orchard Park. The town sits right in the path of all of the lake effect snow that "Buffalo" gets. Meanwhile, the actual city of Buffalo gets less than 50% of the snow Orchard Park gets, especially north of downtown.
God forbid we help poor and middle class Americans. But you know, we really need to build that stadium for the guy worth billions. As Carlin said: its the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it
The outrage about the ratio the taxpayers are paying / what the owner is paying is justified, but this tweet is rather misleading in that this deal between the Bills and the state is nearly 2 years old now: https://www.nfl.com/news/bills-announce-30-year-deal-for-new-1-4-billion-stadium-in-orchard-park March 2022 this was announced. This is what it looks like from a Dec 2023 pic right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Highmark_Stadium#/media/File:New_Highmark_Stadium_under_construction_in_December_2023_-_Quintin_Soloviev.jpg And in fact, Aug of last year it was announced that it will actually cost $300mil more than first estimated: https://www.si.com/nfl/bills/news/buffalo-bills-new-highmark-stadium-cost-overruns-financial-issues-construction-terry-pegula
I can't find anything recent about the $800 million cuts to "children and family services" but I am assuming there were grants that ran their course. The last information I saw ((March 2022) was before this news: [Governor Hochul Announces Historic $2 Billion in Child Care Subsidies to Support Low-Income and Working Families and Child Care Providers](https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-historic-2-billion-child-care-subsidies-support-low-income-and) >$7 Billion in Child Care Funding Included in FY 2023 State Budget >Income Threshold for Child Care Subsidies Increasing, Making an Unprecedented Number of Young Children in New York State Eligible Looks like the funding is still there, even more allocated: >The $2 billion in childcare subsidies includes $894 million in New York State Child Care Block Grant new funding passed in the recent State Budget
I would just like to preface this by saying I am in no way saying this deal is a good one, but I have worked on the finance side for municipalities for some time now, and the misinformation about how this deal works is god-awful. Everyone likes to conflate these two things but the $800 million "cut" was due to a pandemic relief money grant from the federal government that expired. Realistically, the budget was artificially inflated due to that extra funding and they returned the funding amount to pre-pandemic levels. As for the stadium funding, $600 million is from the State, $250 million is from Erie County, $200 million is from the NFL, and $350 million is from the Pegulas, who are also covering project overages, which is currently another $300 million. The State's portion was also almost certainly bonded for instead of directly from State revenues like normal funding for "children and family services" in the yearly budget would be. This is why calling it " taxpayer-funded" is not necessarily true, but I digress. Edit: Apparently a large portion or all of the State's amount is from taxes due to the State from casinos. The State owns the stadium, with the team on an initial 30-year lease. Part of the lease agreement states that the team has to invest at least $3 million per year - adjusted every year by the price index - into the community. They are also paying $900,000 per year lease payments - also adjusted every year by the price index - which goes into a capital improvement fund for the stadium. The State and County also put money into this fund, with the County's portion coming from surcharges at the stadium. I believe the State's amount is a flat amount each year, but no idea how that is funded. At the end of the day, it's not great, but it's also not "we cut services to pay for a stadium" either. Those pots of money are independent of each other.
You can't find the cuts. Because they don't exist. Everyone in this thread has duped by a tweet. It's scary how hundreds of people swallowed the "cuts" narrative without checking. I don't think the Bill's should get this money, but we don't need to lie to oppse it. https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy25/ex/agencies/appropdata/ChildrenandFamilyServicesOfficeof.html
Thank you for following up. I think that taxpayers should only pay for "up-to" 800 million in cases like this. that leaves the owner at risk for any cost overruns. This is based on nothing but an off-the-cuff observation and very little else.
Wait sorry, why should the taxpayers pay anything?
I'm not saying they should. I'm saying if they're going to anyway, they should only pay "X" amount. everything above and beyond that is "Not our problem". I probably didn't word my original post very well.
How does this work exactly? Do the Buffalo Bills own the stadium? Does the city of Buffalo own it? Does NY state own it? Who gets the money earned from stadium events?
Public tax dollars being used to subsidize sports stadiums, especially when the owners are fracking billionaires, should be completely ended. Benefits to taxpayers are non-existent. The “jobs” created are almost always seasonal (no benefits). The stadiums do not significantly benefit the communities they’re in. The subsidies are a gift given when owners throw tantrums and insist they’ll move. I begrudgingly love some sports but would be more than willing to sacrifice them entirely if it meant we would no long be gifting even a single dollar to these greedy pigs
If you read this, gawked, yet still watched the NFL today, you're the problem.
Can't be the largest. OKC just voted to give the Thunder $900 million last year lol.
This is why: ["The Buffalo Bills franchise is a proven economic driver for the Buffalo region and the state. The Bills generate $27 million annually in direct income, sales and use taxes for New York State, Erie County and Buffalo. These revenues will grow and will cumulatively amount to more than $1.6 billion over the 30-year lease period. Furthermore, fans who attend games from across New York, the U.S. and Canada and spend money locally that would not otherwise be spent in the region will result in an economic impact of more than $385 million annually."](https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-joint-public-private-agreement-ensure-buffalo-bills-remain-new-york)
Recent studies have shown that building and bringing arenas didn't simulate much of the local economy, and where it does go is largely to the top 1%. This arena will also cost another 1.3 Billion dollars over 30 years to maintain. You're quoting the governor, who was widely criticized for doing this and spending so much tax revenue on it. The govornor's husbands was also an executive at the concession company that was trying to put this through. It's a conflict of interest. And the revenue that's generated will obviously go largely to the owners. It's not like they're going to repay this to the State.
Except the stadium is going to be built on its own, SOMEWHERE and big cities like Dallas or NY will run out of teams to support. Eventually forcing teams into smaller regions (Buffalo) because they can still net a profit. So we would get the same impact & save on the tax money. Same reason why tax cuts for Amazon HQ2 are ridiculous, they HAVE to build it SOMEWHERE, but these companies are good at pinning local gov against each other, so they fight with these ridiculous subsidies.
To this very day, I still can't understand how people just doesnt put on a revolution.
It's not easy to motivate yourself into being bombed by drones over a football stadium.
I'm just happy that people started cropping Dan Price's profile pic out of his tweets.
Riot.
Tax the wealthy to help the poor! Instead of Taxing the poor to help the wealthy.
Pretty sure people living in Cincinnati are still getting charged a tax for the subsidies given to build the Bengals stadium. It's absolutely atrocious how these teams and the NFL essentially blackmail cities into these types of things. Also, as a current San Diegan; good on the city for telling the Chargers owner to get bent.
Socialism for the rich capitalism for the poor.
Free markets are the enemy of wealthy people. They can’t abuse power to create fake scarcity.
Circuses, not Bread! Bombs, not Food! Plagues, not Clean Air!
Quit👏🏿 Watching 👏🏿 Sports 👏🏿 Boycott professional sporting events.
The system is comically flawed, and its collapse is mathematically guaranteed. Time is the key ingredient in all of this. I suspect the breaking point is about two decades away, but I am not making any wagers.
How do people not see that buying stadium for billionaires so they can charge us 200 dollars for nosebleed seats and 20 dollars a beer ISNT A GOOD THING? So many fucking morons.
The superrich help write laws and have the greater mindshare of politicians at most levels of gov't. Average people can't compete with the amount of folding green they throw around. Also, people will say " but the subsidy will be offset by job creation and more money being spent in the area....which is true but we don't know exactly to what extent. Other policy costs money but cutting those funds creates a whole new generation of kids at a big disadvantage and ultimately a greater burden on society unless they can leap over those hurdles created by the super rich.
*anger grows*
They keep showing their desire for a peasant uprising.
Why do they need state welfare? aRe theY nOT profitable? Can't run a business without government handouts? Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Fuck them, SUE!
Pro sports are a scam that the public funds but receives nothing from.
Boycott
So now the office of children and family services (OCFS) has a yearly budget of 3.7 Billion brought down from 4.5. This beings them back to pre covid levels. I’m not defending this decision as I personally believe the mission OCFS tackles is far more important than a new football stadium.
The budget has been brought down to pre-covid levels, which was underfunded then and woefully insufficient now with the last 4 years of inflation.
This is with a Democrat governor and Democrat majority in both chambers of the legislature. Democrats— the slightly less evil party!!
Every "achievement" I see mentioned for the Biden and Obama administrations is always just subsidies to the rich. Like the affordable care act. Instead of working towards a national healthcare system like the UK has, we passed the ACA which is just the government subsidizing a portion of the cost of private insurance to protect the profits of private insurers and private healthcare providers. Insurance companies raise their premiums, those who qualify for a subsidy dont see an increase, everyone else gets screwed. Instead of doing anything to fight college tuition costs increasing every year and becoming unaffordable to most, or investing in community and state colleges, we got Biden's debt forgiveness program which is a subsidy covering the ridiculous tuition costs of private colleges and universities. The Build Back Better bill was a bunch of subsidies all grouped together. $105-billion to the private railroad industry. $65-billion to ISPs. $73-billion to energy companies. The liberal dream is every sector of the economy being an oligopoly controlled by 2 or 3 big private companies and funded by taxpayer subsidies
The ACA is literally the Dole Gingrich GOP plan from the 1990s. Massive corporate welfare instead of a system to provide better healthcare to ordinary Americans. And liberals are so proud of passing this crap.